


Warmth

by Elthefirst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Correspondence, Depression, Diary/Journal, Happy Ending, M/M, Masturbation, Potioneer Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-07-27 05:01:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16211948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elthefirst/pseuds/Elthefirst
Summary: After the war, Harry's magic slowly fades and Draco has to face the hatred of the wizarding world. When they both accidentally buy a couple of diaries connected by magic, they realise that they are not alone.(God, I hate summaries!!)Written for the #writober2018





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, this is my first story in years and my very first in English. PLEASE tell me if there are mistakes.  
> I want to specify that I am not an expert in mental illnesses and luckily I never experience depression myself. Again, if there are mistakes related to this subject let me know.  
> I am a sucker for Happy Endings and, even if I will be writing weekly letting the prompts take me where they want, I can assure you that there will be one.  
> Please, enjoy :)

Magic  
“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione softly, “you are losing it.”  
Harry felt the knot in his chest enlarge making itself noticeable in a way that usually did only in his bed, late into the night.  
He flicked his wand harder as if it would make a difference. The feather on Hermione’s desk trembled slightly but didn’t start floating.  
“Can it happen?” asked Ron, and it was his concerned tone more than Hermione’s that stopped Harry’s breath somewhere down his throat.  
Harry didn’t know when it had begun fading. Maybe since he had won the war and all he could feel was the sense of failure at every single joke George made that was only half finished, at Teddy small body in a cot in a house that wasn’t his parents, at the sound of Kreacher’s tired steps for Grimmauld Place and the dry pop of his magic.  
One day, while Harry was too busy feeling guilty, Ginny had stopped smiling and Harry set her free from the promise of love she had made to a different Harry.  
She smiled, now. He had seen her in the prophet with her long hair windswept and her cheek rosy from the exertion.  
Happiness suited her.  
He had started ignoring the steady loss of magic. At the very beginning, he had thought of going to St. Mungo’s to get checked, but the day he had booked an appointment he had preferred to lay in bed unthinking.  
Only that morning, when even the simplest spells had failed, he gave up and flooed Hermione and Ron admitting his problem.  
“Well,” replied Hermione bemused, “it could be a curse.”  
She didn’t sound convinced. She looked at Harry pointedly and then braved a look at Ron that told Harry she wished he wasn’t there.  
She knew, Harry thought.  
She knew he had failed and now his magic was failing him.  
“I’ll research,” she said finally with an optimism that was just for show.  
Harry nodded. He missed feeling angry about things.  
Ron got closer to the desk and observed the feather like he was trying to put the blame on it. Somewhere behind the fog of confusion that followed him everywhere, Harry appreciated it.  
He put a big hand on Harry’s shoulder and smiled.  
“Don’t worry mate,” he said with big, open eyes, “if ‘Mione's researching it, you’ll be fine.”  
He had said the word research in the same strangely proud and exasperated way he did every time he was talking about his wife. Harry felt it was appropriate to smile and did it, but he wasn’t sure he felt like it. 

Potion  
Draco cursed and closed his eyes as the potion slowly got greener and greener. It was the fourth batch he had failed to make.  
He sniffed loudly at the vapour trying to discern the mistake by smell, but all he could recognise was the strong stench of dried wormwood.  
It just wasn’t his day. Or maybe his week.  
He passed a hand through his hair and grimaced at the greasiness. It wasn’t anything toxic, just something you would not want in your hair.  
He cursed again.  
He knew he could do it, but it seemed that his ingredients were working against him. In the next room over he heard Mr Flibwin stroll around the office. He wouldn’t accept recalcitrant ingredient as an excuse for another failed potion.  
Draco was tempted to give up and go back home. He didn’t have to work, per se.  
His father would surely be thrilled at the news of Draco’s change of heart after the long fight they’d had on the matter.  
Thinking of his father’s smirk Draco vanished the failed potion and started over again.  
At the end of the day, he was tired and aching from having to stand at the cauldron the whole day. The resulting potion was barely acceptable and Mr Flibwin had no qualms in telling him so.  
He apparated directly at the manor without passing through his London apartment. The witch next door did not appreciate his presence and he wasn’t in the mood for her scared disdain. Which was complicated since almost everyone looked at him that way.  
All things considered, he thought, he should have been grateful that someone had accepted him as an apprentice at all, even if it was a grumpy old man. At least, he seemed to hate everyone equally. It wouldn’t have surprise Draco if he had hired him for the specific purpose of pissing off the general public.  
The stark gates of the manor opened with a twinkle on magic which always made Draco feel pleasantly tickled.  
“You are late.” Said Lucius sternly from the table when Draco entered the dining room.  
Narcissa looked at her husband disapprovingly but didn’t comment.  
She rose to hug him lightly ignoring her husband’s disapproval in turn.  
“How was your job today?” she asked daring a smile. The word job still sounded quite stilted in her mouth.  
“Terrible,” Draco answered honestly before he had finished considering lying for the sake of not giving his father satisfaction. It had been always hard for him to lie to his mother.  
They sat down in a silence that was familiar, but definitely not comfortable.  
As Draco flooed back home, something else his parents seemed to disapprove, he thought that life would be better, if only something went right for once.

Heat  
Walking had been a stupid decision.  
Harry wondered if the dementors had come back from wherever Kingsley had banished them at the end of the war. Surely, it was too early in October for the weather to be this cold.  
Harry looked around at the muggles shopping around the river bank and noticed that most of them were wearing light jackets.  
Maybe the cold was just inside him.  
Somewhere close by a kid started crying in his pram. Harry watched the mother hurry to comfort him, looking around, afraid to be judged as a bad mother. Harry thought of Teddy who sometimes experienced his first transformations and cried for hours in the arms of a grandmother who was too tired or of a godfather who was just incompetent.  
Harry sighed and felt somewhat disappointed that there was no cloud of condensation in front of him. He buried his hands deep into his pocket and kept walking.  
He thought of Hermione’s worried face and Ron’s optimistic smile two days before and felt shame at the prospect of disappointing them again. As soon as Hermione had had a chance to talk to him alone she had hugged him.  
She spoke softly and kept her expression relaxed, but Harry noticed the signs of weariness in the barely-there lines of her face.  
She wasn’t blaming him and Harry resented her for this.  
As he got closer to the Leaky Cauldron people started recognising him and waving smiling, sometimes even awed. A child started pulling at his father’s sleeve, excited.  
Harry nodded slightly at every single one of them, but couldn’t force himself to smile. He imagined the joy of the reporters in writing once again how much of a terrible hero of the wizarding world he was.  
He would have been angrier if he didn’t agree with them.  
He entered the pub looking down and ignored as many people as possible.  
For a second he entertained the idea of getting a strong drink to brace for the day of shopping, but maybe drinking before lunchtime was giving up a little too much.  
Not that the concept of lunchtime made much sense to him at the moment.  
He skipped the bar completely when he realised that the lively fire next to it did nothing to lessen the chill that was biting at his fingers and lungs.  
He stopped a minute to look at the flames. For a second he thought he saw the slim figure of Remus leaning towards the fire. The man sitting in front of it, with his long black hair could have been Sirius if he hadn’t been starved for years.  
Maybe they would have been able to explain to him why he felt like nothing could ever feel warm again.  
He bit the inside of his cheeks.  
He missed the heat.

Public  
Mr Flibwin was a sadist.  
That was the only possible explanation for asking Draco to go get ingredients in Diagon Alley.  
The previous day he had even managed to make a more than decent Lung-clearing potion.  
The sparse group of shoppers who had avoided the September crowd moved aside to let him pass. They were either angry or scared. Draco wasn’t sure which one he preferred.  
He looked down at the parchment in his hand. He didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Mr Flibwin had seemed to avoid any ingredient that could only be found in Knockturn Alley. He supposed he should have been grateful.  
He entered the apothecary ready for the acrid smell to attach itself to his clothes for days.  
The shopkeeper barely looked at him, busy at weighting small black bead that, Draco realised with a certain amount of disgust, were spiders’ eyes.  
Draco was alone in the shop and took his time to select the best of the ingredients. It took him almost an hour considering the time he had wasted arguing with the shopkeeper who had barked a price that wasn’t even close to the one he ought to have spent with the ingredients he had bought.  
Draco walked the wide road with his teeth gritted.  
He knew that he had to pay Mr Flibwin the difference.  
He walked towards Gringott’s suppressing the anger that bubbled from deep within his guts.  
The Goblins eyed him with their usual suspicious glare.  
He left the bank with the last sad pouch of gold from his personal vault, wishing he could just curse someone.  
At the end of the road, he noticed the familiar figure of Pansy Parkinson stroll through Diagonally with the arrogance who someone that knew they were not well liked.  
He dived into the first shop he had found to avoid her.  
Bravery had never been his forte.  
He looked around the shop and noticed with relief that it was an almost empty Flourish and Blotts. The old man who managed the shop looked at him from the hidden corned where he had been busy stocking books. Draco pointedly feigned interest in a display of small black books near the entrance.  
The tag explained that they were innovative notebooks where you could correspond with the buyer of the twin book. He grimaced thinking of Madame Rosmerta, aware that it was probably the same magic.  
The manager looked at him pointedly, clearly displeased by his presence. Draco looked outside in time to see Pansy pass in front of the window.  
He grabbed one of the stupid books, paid for it and apparated as soon as he had exited the shop.

Book  
The stuff Harry had bought in Diagon Alley was still in the bag.  
He had been there for almost an hour, shopping for something he could do without magic. Then he had turned a corner and seen George talking animatedly to a group of people, presenting some new item that looked only marginally dangerous.  
He had briefly wondered whether losing someone like Fred felt like a missing limb to his twin.  
He ran before he could think of an answer.  
Harry wasn’t sure how long he had slept. He imagined that the food he had bought was to be thrown away.  
Maybe Kreacher had done it, he thought closing his eyes again.  
He stayed in bed a little longer, ignoring the need to go to the toilet. The pressure was almost painful and he wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing.  
He opened his eyes and got up with a groan. Something in his stiff joints had cracked.  
He trudged toward the toilet with his eyes only half open. As he got naked to shower he eyed critically at his bare chest. He looked down at his sharp hipbones. He needed to eat more.  
He shrugged and entered the shower thinking that maybe he could masturbate since he was there, but his shoulder ached from lying on it for hours. He wished he could use his magic to speed the water heating. Maybe his shoulder would feel better then.  
In the end, his shoulder kept hurting and he didn’t masturbate. Even because the water hadn’t felt warm at all.  
“Kreacher,” he croaked when he had worn a pair of trousers he had found somewhere on the floor.  
A loud pop announced the arrival of the elf that looked at him with a grudging expression like he had been interrupted while doing something far more useful than serving his master.  
“Could you make me a sandwich,” Harry asked after having cleared his voice, “and, please, light some fire, it’s freezing.”  
Kreacher looked at the fireplace where a small but steady fire was burning quietly.  
“Yes, master,” he said with a bow that looked positively derisive.  
Harry finally turned his attention to the bag and rifled through its content. it consisted mainly of books. He had no memory of buying most of them, which would explain why he had found one with the ominous title “The art of breeding carnivorous plants: how to survive the magic of herbology with all your limbs intact.”  
He certainly remembered the small black notebook. The shopkeeper had insisted that they had been a hit with Hogwarts students and had practically shoved one in Harry’s pile of books. Harry didn’t know why he thought that he would be interested in writing to a Hogwarts student. Also, he didn’t have a good track record for books where someone else had written.  
He hadn’t felt like arguing.  
As usual, a nasty voice murmured in his ear.  
There was a sandwich in a plate next to him on the bed. He took a bite feeling suddenly famished.  
He wasn’t really thinking as the took a quill and wrote hurriedly: “Do you ever feel like it will never be warm again?”

 

Quill  
Draco had spent another full day making a potion. He was hungry, tired and in no mood to deal with his parents. Luckily his father had answered the floo when he called to tell them that he had a sudden obligation. It was just a small lie, he repeated himself while he was queuing at his usual Indian takeout waiting for his food.  
The unexpected crowd had only added to his discomfort. He off-handedly realised that it was the weekend. Blaise had invited him to go out with the old group, but seeing Greg without Vince always felt strangely wrong.  
If Draco had been a better person he would have felt more guilty.  
He finally reached his apartment and nodded defiantly at the witch next door who closed her door in his face.  
He deposited the food on the kitchen table and wandered around the two small rooms looking for anything to do for the rest of the night.  
He eyed at his bed considering the idea of just sleeping.  
Draco sighed.  
He ate his dinner in silence, a light but persisting headache pulsing through his temples.  
He almost regretted not going to the manor where his mother would have coddled him complaining at his thinness and his father would have given unwanted opinions at regular intervals throughout dinner.  
It said a lot about his solitude, he considered.  
He ended up lying on his bed way earlier than a person his age was supposed to, but his back was grateful at the respite.  
Slowly and uncomfortably, the memory of the days after his trial when he had lived in his room shunned by society and ashamed of his family resurfaced.  
Draco hated being alone with his thoughts.  
He eyed at the bedside table where the stupid black notebook rested innocently, almost daring him to ignore it.  
Draco groaned and took it.  
A small slip of parchment fell from it explaining in an over-enthusiastic way how it worked. He grimaced again when he read that it was indeed a variation of the protean charm.  
The tone of the instruction made it clear that the intended audience were students.  
He opened the first page with a smirk expecting it to be blank or maybe to have the flourishing writing of a teenage girl introducing herself to a potential friend.  
Instead, there was a single starkly written line that said: “do you ever feel like it will never be warm again?”  
It’s a boy, though Draco. He looked at it a little longer, feeling the writing to be familiar, but he couldn’t place it.  
He closed the book with a thud.  
He didn’t have time to waste with some teenage angst.  
He rolled on his side and switched off the lights deciding to finally sleep.  
Behind his closed lids he recalled the image of the vanishing cabinet and the empty image of Dumbledore dying.  
He took the book back and cast a Lumos.  
Maybe it was his turn to save a life.  
“yes,” he wrote.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo. I gave up on trying to respect the 500 words limit for the challenge, but I tried to contain myself. I hope you will enjoy this chapter and, again, please let me know if you find mistakes.  
> Enjoy

Tongue  
Harry had been sitting up on his bed for a long time.  
He had seen the light change in the corner of the room steadily, from the synthetic orange of the street lamps to the crisp blue of the morning.  
He moved slightly to give some blood flow to his numb legs. In doing so the hard corner of the black book pressed against his hip painfully. Harry didn't move again, but his mind went back to the thin elegant “Yes” that had appeared under his question. He thought of the poor Hogwarts student who had bought the book hoping to make a new friend and had ended up with a wreck like him.   
He felt the tingle of his wards being disrupted but refused to stir. It wasn’t like anyone but Ron and Hermione could access.   
And Ginny, said a small vicious voice in his head.  
The mattress dipped next to him. Harry sniffed and smelled the sweet smell of chocolate.   
“Kreacher called me here,” said Ron as a greeting.  
Harry nodded, but he wasn’t listening.   
He was afraid Ron was going to try to tell him what to do, as Hermione had done.   
“Neville told me that he has bought a new plant,” said Ron nodding towards the book on the bedside table.   
“He had to go to St. Mungo’s with a big rash on his face,” he continued amused, “apparently, it was shaped like a dick.”  
Ron snorted and Harry turned to look at him.  
He was certain that he was supposed to laugh. He almost did, but he didn’t feel like pretending. Not with Ron.  
Ron kept talking about inane facts for hours. His voice became hoarse and low.   
The light changed again, but Harry still didn’t want to move. Somewhere in the last hour, Ron had pushed a paper cup into his lax hand.   
Harry started drinking without thinking and burned his tongue with the creamy chocolate.   
He was scratching it with his teeth when Ron clapped him on his shoulder.  
“Got to go,” he said simply, “drink that.” He nodded towards the cup and left.  
Harry forced himself to get up and go to the toilet.   
All of his joints ached and Harry wondered if it was normal to feel so old.  
He went back to bed and kept sipping the scalding chocolate ignoring the discomfort on his sensitive tongue.   
At some point, he started reading the book on plants that he had left open.   
He neither cared about the content, nor he really understood it, but it made him think of Neville and that was comforting.  
Kreacher appeared sometimes after dark to light the room around him. He left a sandwich and a piece of dark chocolate.   
He looked at the food uncertain.   
Suddenly the black book pressing against his hip caught his attention. He opened it and wrote: “What do you do then?”  
The book stayed open on the covers while he ate his sandwich. He had just taken the first bite of chocolate when another set of elegant words appeared under his new question.  
“Try some chocolate.”  
Harry smiled.

Bed  
Draco lounged in his bed.  
It was his first day off in more than a week. He knew that he was supposed to go out and buy some groceries. Maybe clean the house.   
He had kind of avoided telling his parents about his day and he had no arrangement whatsoever, which should have been depressing for someone his age, but Draco was satisfied.   
He had been awake for a couple of hours, but he had made no commitment into getting up for anything more than going to the toilet and getting something to eat in bed. He was considering whether he would change his blankets later in the day and if it was worth it just to jerk off while laying down for a change. He smirked and decided that, yes, it was worth it.  
He turned under the covers facing up with a sigh and started playing with the coarse sparse hair that started under his navel. He didn’t feel like taking his time, but at the same time, he rarely allowed himself the luxury of doing it in bed. In his pants, he felt his dick stir with interest and his smirk grew. He took his pants off rejoicing at the sensation of the soft blankets against his groin.   
He had just started palming his warm cock closing his eyes and imagining someone else touching him. Maybe the cute delivery boy from the Indian place, or even better the jogger he met every morning on the way to work from his favourite coffee shop.   
He looked like someone who would take his sweet time to make him scream. Thinking of his thick fingers Draco raised his left leg slightly, allowing his left hand to wander downwards, barely scraping his balls. It was going to be dry, he grimaced touching his hole.  
He groaned at the idea of moving to take the lube on his bedside drawer. He didn’t want to stop touching himself and he felt the image of the jogger slip from his mind.   
“Damn,” he said giving up.  
He quickly moved on the bed to reach the glass vial of his own homemade lubricant.  
He let himself fall back after having coated his hand, uncaring of the greasy substance clinging to the blankets in his haste to go back to touching himself.  
He finally let his finger breach his hole with a deep sigh. The position was uncomfortable and Draco groaned again at the thought of his favourite dildo in the shower.   
“Damn,” he repeated. He kept trying to push his finger deeper. It wasn’t enough. He focused more on his dick letting the sensation of the sensitive skin moving over his shaft prevail over the frustration on not having enough pressure in his hole. When he came it came as a surprise and Draco didn’t really feel satisfied. He groaned turning in shock against the pillow.  
Next time he had to remember to prepare all he needed first.  
He went to take a shower eyeing his unused dildo scornfully like it was to blame for giving him a half-assed orgasm.   
He stayed cross for the rest of the day. it wasn’t until late into the evening that he remembered to check the black book still on his kitchen table.   
“It worked a little” was written in the same stark boyish way.   
Draco finally smiled, happy knowing he had done something good, albeit little.   
“I’m happy to hear that,” he wrote in the end, “I remember how stressful it was to be a student.”  
“I’m not a student,” appeared almost immediately.  
Draco looked at the word forming and, honestly, he had no idea what to do with them.

Pumpkin  
Harry opened his eyes and closed them again immediately. Something big and orange was resting on the other side of the bed.   
“Kreacher,” he called keeping his eyes closed.   
“Yes?” he answered from somewhere in the corridor, “Master Harry,” he remembered to add.  
“Why?” he asked simply.  
“Why what?” he paused again, “Master Harry.”   
“Why there is a pumpkin in my bed?” he specified strangely unfazed.  
“Th…Ms Granger sent it here,” he said like it was a perfect explanation.  
“I see,” said Harry finally opening his eyes and groping for his glasses.   
Harry sat cross-legged on his bed for a long time, which was somehow a let down considering that the day before he had managed to stay in the drawing room for most of the day.   
He eyed at the pumpkin every once in while, uncertain if he was supposed to send an owl to Hermione to thank her. Or to ask for an explanation.  
“What would you do with a pumpkin?” he wrote unthinkingly in the black book.  
The person that had the other one- it was a boy, Harry had decided, hadn’t answered again after Harry had told him that he wasn’t a student.   
Harry wasn’t sure what to make of it. Again, there was no answer, but Harry supposed that maybe, unlike him, this guy had things to do during the day. He still felt strangely betrayed.  
He touched the smooth orange surface. Maybe he was supposed to carve it.   
Aunt Petunia only bought fancy looking ceramic ones. Harry supposed she wouldn’t have stood the mess.   
Harry was surprised in realise that he had just spent an entire day musing over the pumpkin and wondered whether that had been Hermione’s goal.  
He snorted. It wouldn’t have surprised him.  
“Pumpkin pasties?” appeared suddenly in the open book resting next to the pumpkin.   
“Do you always think of sweets?” he wrote back.  
“well,” the guy wrote and then paused, “yes.”   
Harry liked the way he wrote “yes”.   
“What’s your name?”   
Harry looked at the new word that had formed. He scrunched his nose.  
“I’d rather not say,” he replied honestly after wondering if he could still use Neville’s name. He supposed that they were all too famous now.  
“Okay, I shall call you pumpkin, then.”   
Harry snorted.  
“Again,” he scribbled, “I’d rather not, sweet.”  
“You will NOT call me sweet!!!”   
Harry surprised himself with a boastful laugh.  
“How should I call you?” he wrote instead, still shaking slightly.  
There was a long pause and Harry thought that maybe he wasn’t going to receive an answer after all.  
“Are we doing this?” the guy answered.   
Harry paused before replying:  
“Call me J.”   
“D.” simply came into the page.  
Handcuffs  
Draco was tired.   
He couldn’t believe he had just spent the night writing back and forth with some stranger in a book.  
They had unspokenly agreed not to ask personal questions, but Draco had at least discerned that it was a man around his age and that, being British, he must have lived through the war.  
He wondered how J. would have reacted at knowing he was talking to a Death Eater.  
He couldn’t hide, at least to himself, that he had spent a long time thinking of all the J. names he could come up with. Merlin, he hoped it wasn’t that Hufflepuff Justin guy.  
J. was, very clearly, into Quidditch. At a certain point during the night he had been certain that if they had continued on the topic, it would have escalated out of control.  
Draco snorted stirring the violet potion in his cauldron.   
He was scared of losing someone he didn’t even know.  
Pathetic.  
And yet, he had found liberating talking about superficial things without the ghost of the past looming over every sentence he uttered.   
The day was trudging on and Draco caught himself more than once wishing he had taken the book with him at work to check whether J. had answered.  
They had left the conversation at listing all their favourite sweets, which -Draco suspected, was at least in part to mock him.  
Considering how long it usually took him to get attached to people it was a bit worrisome how easily he was getting on with this man.   
It was scary in a way that he wasn’t used to considering positive.  
It felt like he could understand him and all it had taken was one night of writing of superficial things.   
He silently braced himself for the unavoidable disappointment.  
When Mr Flibwin entered the room to dismiss him for the day he rushed out, elated.  
He even nodded politely to the witch next door.  
She still closed the door immediately.  
The book was still on the bedside table where he had left it before leaving for work. Seeing his bed he suddenly felt exhausted, but he still opened the book to the page he had left on. The page was full and so were the following two pages. The blotchy text went from an unbelievable long list of sweets to a series of jabbing remarks on the absence of his answer that grew from sarcastic to worried. Draco hadn’t even finished reading everything before he answered: “Some people have to work, you know?”   
J. had told him the night before that he wasn’t working at the moment and Draco wasn’t sure if he felt envious or pitied him.  
“Oy!” was the simple answer.   
Even this two letters looked tired.  
Draco wondered if J. had waited for him to answer before sleeping.  
He called himself an idiot and stopped himself from smiling too much.  
“I’m spent.” he wrote, “Going to bed, sorry.”  
“Me too,” J. answered. Draco felt disappointed and called himself an idiot again.  
“Goodnight, D.” came on the crisp page, “Let’s talk tomorrow.”  
Draco smiled against his better sense and wrote untidily: “Sleep well, Pumpkin.”  
“Sod off”   
Draco snorted, then “Sleep well, Sweet.” Slowly came up.  
He fell asleep feeling his face warm. The dark ribbon bookmark had caught on his wrist. Draco thought that it looked like a handcuff.

 

Black Cat  
Harry was bored.  
He didn’t think he had been this bored. Ever.   
He had even “accidentally” awoken Mrs Black just to pick up a fight. If he stopped to think about it, he realised that he was feeling much better, but for the most part, he preferred to complain to Kreacher that there wasn’t anything interesting to do.  
There was something interesting, but Harry suspected that D. was working again. Harry supposed that Ron and Hermione were also busy, but it didn’t stop him from trying to floo them.  
He walked around the house eating crisps from a bag that Kreacher had tried to hide the day before.  
He refused to stop and think of the implication of him becoming obsessed with a book, again.  
He tried reading some more of the book about carnivorous plants and decided to write to Neville.   
He was already halfway through the letter when he realised that he had nothing to tell him.  
He groaned and threw the paper in the wastebasket.   
It was around midday when he gave up and took the black book from his bed. The “Sleep well, sweet.” stood out starker than the rest. Harry groaned and hit his forehead with the book. Had he completely lost his mind?   
He hoped that he hadn’t scared D. too much. He felt like such an idiot.  
He reread the things they had written to each other late at night. D. seemed like a nervous dude. It might have sounded ridiculous said by someone like Harry, but he needed to relax.  
However, Harry couldn’t deny that talking, writing, to him was, at least, different.  
He sighed when he realised that talking to someone he didn’t know had been exactly what Hermione had suggested.   
He still thought that it probably wasn’t wise to tell her about it.  
He was skimming through the part where they had argued about Quidditch with a smirk. Then it was just a very, very long list of sweets.   
“Entertain me,” he wrote unthinkingly.  
It was dangerous to rely that much on a complete stranger.   
He smirked, he liked the idea.   
He moved back to the writing desk in the drawing room with the book open and unanswered.  
He left it open in front of him and tried again to write to Neville asking him question raised by the Herbology book whose answer he honestly didn’t care much about.  
When he had finished it he also invited Ron out for a game of Quidditch and Hermione for a coffee.  
He was satisfied.   
On the background, he still felt the crushing sensation of failure that had clouded him for weeks, but he still thought that everything just looked a little lighter.   
He hurried back in his room and got the wand he had abandoned on the dresser for a week, frustrated at not being able to use it.  
He grinned at the sensation of holding it.   
“Lumos,” he said clearly in the empty room. The tip flickered for an instant.   
Harry stood in the room for a minute looking at his wand, then he threw it against the wall.  
He fell onto his bed blaming himself for hoping. It was different. He was angry.  
His hands trembled in frustration.   
“Shit!” he yelled into the empty room.  
He couldn’t lay in bed again, he needed to move. He started moving loudly around the house ignoring the clumsy way Kreacher seemed to be hiding from him.  
When he arrived back at the drawing-room he looked at the written parchment for his friends feeling ridiculous.   
The black book was still open and under his request, two lines had appeared.  
“I’m working”  
Then there was a black blotch of ink with a long thick line starting from one side. It was enchanted so that the line moved sinuously like a small snake.  
“it’s a cat” explained the second line.  
Harry coughed a dry laugh in disbelief.   
His eyes prickled.  
He let himself cry.

Blood  
Draco paced around the spacious corridors of the Manor. In his inner pocket, he felt the book digging into his stomach as he moved. Rows of portraits craned their necks to look at him. An army of pale faces followed him and Draco wanted to hide. His father had been particularly insufferable that night and the only excuse Draco had come up with to get rid of him was that he wanted to visit the portrait gallery. He regretted his choice with passion.   
J. was strange and, yes he knew that he had no way of knowing, but he knew. He had answered at his drawing with a “you are ridiculous.” and Draco thought that no one had ever called him that without meaning it.  
For the rest of the night he had barely answered him, but every time that Draco had tried to bid him goodnight he would write something compelling like he didn’t want to be left alone. It was starkly different from the night they had spent chatting where J. had poured over any stupid thing he could think of, like the fact that he honestly believed that the cannons had a chance.   
Even that day, when Draco stole looks at the pages any time he had a slow moment in the laboratory, J. had just greeted him wishing him a good day at work and then he had been silent for the rest of the day despite the fact that Draco had written to him a couple of time to ask him how he felt and to taunt him about the fact that he had nothing to do the whole day. In hindsight, it might have been the wrong thing to say. He wasn’t sure following what circumstance J. was jobless.   
Draco finally reached the end of the corridor. He entered a dusty room that, if memory served him right, had been his grandfather study. He sat a the large desk and lit a candle fishing for his book. There was still no sign of J.  
“How important do you think family is?” he wrote looking at the Malfoy crest on the silver paper cutter.  
He leaned against the back of the chair ignoring the dust that was settling in his hair not really hoping to receive an answer.  
And yet, he wasn’t that surprised when a string of words started appearing under his.  
“That is a complicated question.”  
“Short answer?” asked J. without waiting for his rebuttal. “If I had one it would be very important,.”  
Draco’s stomach dropped. Wrong question, definitely wrong question.  
“What about you?” prompted J. when he didn’t receive an answer.   
“That is a complicated question.” he copied him hoping to lighten the subject. He didn’t think it had worked.  
“I love them.” he wrote when he didn’t receive any answer, either positive or negative.  
“And then sometimes I hate them.”  
“I have been told that that’s how love works.” replied J.   
Draco looked at the boyish way J. had written the word love. It looked foreign.   
There was a long pause and Draco imagined that J. was also musing on the meaning of love.  
“Sometimes I worry I’m too much like them,” he confessed, feeling safe at the notion the J. couldn’t understand the implication of what he was saying.  
“I worry that I’m not enough like them.” came up on the page. The candlelight flickered over their different words.  
“They say that children are flesh and blood of their parents,” added J. after a while, “I wonder if that’s enough.”  
Draco gripped his quill, unable to answer. He closed his eyes leaning back once more. When he opened again J. had written: “How was work today?”  
Draco smiled, thankful for the change of subject.  
“Dreadful” he wrote imagining the drawl in his own voice.  
They kept writing for a little longer before Draco started yawning widely. He realised that he had been playing with the paper cutter absentmindedly only when he felt a sting and a warm drop of blood fall through his finger. He looked at it for a moment.  
Flesh and blood, he thought. He hoped it wasn’t enough.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lengths of this chapter went slightly out of end...  
> Enjoy and, as usual, let me know if you notice any mistake.

Rest  
Harry was flying.   
How he had managed not to do that for months was a mystery. From his position high in the sky, he could see the vague shapes of Hermione and Mrs Weasley sitting in the garden, no doubt, with a warm cup of tea. He clenched his numb fingers around the wood and thought that he would have loved some, just not enough to make himself dismount his broom.  
Ron joined him midair with a wide grin who made him look like Charlie, but Harry supposed he wouldn’t have liked the reminder.   
“Mate,” he yelled over the sound of the wind, “you need to let me try your broom for the next match.”  
He sounded inebriated with happiness and Harry couldn’t help but think that part of it was due to the fact that Harry had been the one inviting them to spend a day together.  
Harry nodded and answered with a grin of his own. He veered downwards towards the ground. The cold wind was brutal against his face was unforgiving despite the bright sun behind him. At least it had managed to wake him up. Again, he had spent the night talking with D. The night before he had seemed distressed. Harry almost regretted avoiding revealing their identities at the beginning: he felt that D. would have listened to his thoughts about family, but he didn’t know how to express them without referring to his personal experience.   
His feet touched the ground with a soft thud that made Mrs Weasley turn to look at him with a placid smile.   
Harry felt guilt pull at his chest.   
“Harry, dear, want a cuppa?”   
Harry smiled at her hurting his sore cheeks and nodded.  
Ron joined him on the ground with, if Harry could be the judge of that, much less grace.   
“I’m going to have a cup of tea,” he said to Ron who shrugged and sat next to Hermione.   
Harry could feel his magic pulse around his body. He wasn’t sure if it had been for the day he had spent surrounded by it, or for the fact that he had actually gone and told Mr and Mrs Weasley about his issue. Mrs Weasley had almost cried.   
After the tea, they played again. They were discussing the possibility to play just another short match, but the sun started dipping down and a freezing breeze had risen.  
They let themselves fall on the chairs they had previously occupied with contented sighs and groans. Hermione, who had been alone with a book, barely raised her face.   
“You look better,” said Ron loudly looking straight into Harry’s eyes. Hermione sent him a glance that could have killed and closed her book.  
Harry looked at the interaction, forgetting to feel self-conscious at Ron’s observation.   
A very long uncomfortable silence followed.   
“I feel better,” Harry broke the silence.  
“Did anything happen?” asked Hermione eagerly, like he desperately wanted to take notes.  
Harry shook his head, then immediately regretted lying to his friends.  
“Yes,” he said looking in turn at the both of them, “but I don’t want to talk about it.”  
They both looked briefly annoyed, but soon they smiled understanding.   
They stayed in silence a little bit longer listening to the sound of Mrs Weasley bustling around the kitchen to make dinner.  
Hermione soon resumed talking about her job, evidently taken by all the new perspectives. Ron instead kept stealing small glances at him and, as usual, Harry suspected that he had understood more than Harry was comfortable with. Or even more than he was ready to admit to himself.   
He left the Barrow full and content, but with a nagging anxiety at not having checked the book for the whole day.  
When he opened it a half page of text had already appeared. D. was too busy complaining about his boss to notice that Harry hadn’t been there.   
Harry smiled at the frantic but elegant writing. Was it stupid to think that he had missed him?  
He fell on the bed gripping at the book and the quill. His eyes wanted to close, but at the same time, he didn’t want to miss a single word.  
Resting could wait. 

Wet  
“So,” said Nott loudly, pausing to take a sip from his pint, “what do you think happened to Potter?”  
The table erupted. Some people laughed, others shook their heads.  
Draco drank his fire whiskey in silence. He had asked himself the same question since he had seen the front page of the prophet that morning about Potter’s loss of magic. Rita Skeeter had been ruthless even for his standard. The only picture of Potter they had was printed on the first page, grim and dirty from the battle. “The Boy who Lost his Magic” was the catchy title.   
“Maybe the Dark Lord cursed him before dying,” said Goyle stupidly, with a trace of satisfaction at the idea. Another wave of laughter erupted throughout the table. Draco noticed Blaise looking at him with curiosity, but he seemed satisfied with Draco’s annoyed expression because he nodded and went back to chatting with Daphne.  
Draco decided that if he had to endure the company of his fellow Slytherins, he could at least do so while drunk and drowned his whiskey.  
At the end of the night, he was far more than tipsy and gratefully grabbed the arm that Blaise had offered him outside the pub, ready for the shock of apparition.   
“I shouldn’t have taken you there,” Blaise said calmly as soon as they had arrived into his living room.  
Draco nodded but avoided answering otherwise in fear of puking over the carpet. He liked the carpet. He turned to look at Blaise stark figure in the darkness of the room. He wondered whether he could convince him to have sex before he left. In the end, Blaise left with a nod before he could gather the courage.   
Draco groaned and started undressing ignoring the pounding that was starting in his head and the sense of nausea that hadn’t left yet. He arrived in front of his bed just in time as his trousers pooling at his feet made him fall ungracefully on the comforter. He was still wearing his white shirt, but somehow he had remembered to take off his sock. He giggled, his brain was strange. He burrowed his face on his hands wincing at the feeling of his wristwatch digging into his cheekbone.   
He stuck out his hand immediately and felt the hard corner of the book.   
He wondered if J. was up.   
He always seemed to be for him.   
Draco blushed.  
He settled over the blankets and opened the book, disappointed when he saw the page empty after the usual “Goodnight, sweet.”  
Were they flirting? Draco wasn’t sure, but most importantly he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing.   
“J.,” he wrote wonkily, “j.!!”   
“Oy” appeared under in the usual stark boyish writing. Draco smiled. He was a bit in love with his writing.  
“j.,” he repeated, “what do you look like?”   
“Are you drunk?” J. wrote, “your writing looks drunk!”   
“I’m not drumk!” he wrote hurriedly.  
“Still…” answered J.   
“Oh,” he scribbled, “right, we can’t say thins things.”  
Draco looked at the page thoughtfully. He focused for a second on his hand playing with the quill.   
“Your hand!!” he wrote finally, “you can show me yor hand.”  
“My hand?”  
Draco nodded and forgot to answer. After a while, he realised that J. couldn’t see him.  
“ye, trace it on the page.”  
There was another long pause, then on the almost blank page, a long line started appearing. Draco looked at it forming, smiling. It seemed that J. wasn’t very good at it, because it was a bit wonky and most of his pinky finger was out of the page.   
“That’s a nice hand!” wrote Draco when H. had finished tracing his thumb.   
He immediately put his own hand over the one that had just appeared on the page. For some reason, his heart was hammering against his chest. His fingers were slightly longer and, it seemed, thinner. He giggled again gripping at his quill and tracing his own hand over J.’s.  
“See?”  
“I’m not sure I do.” J. answered and Draco couldn’t help but think that he seemed amused.   
“We have the same hands.” he explained, “Because we are men!”  
Draco kept his hand over the shape of J.’s on the page. It was definitely thicker. He supposed that he could have blamed on the alcohol because he suddenly thought that maybe J. also had a thick cock.  
“Damn,” he muttered into the empty room wetting his lips.  
J. hadn’t answered and Draco found it annoying.   
“I like men’s hands.” Draco wrote still eyeing at his own hand on the page.  
“I like men.” he continued.  
“Okay,” J. traced every letter slowly, “thank you for telling me.”  
“I also like your hand.” he wrote.  
Draco looked at the answer. What did it mean? He groaned and shook his head in confusion.   
“Go to bed, D.” Wrote J. after a while.   
“Not sweet?” even in his state Draco realised that he was going to regret it the morning after.  
“Goodnight, sweet.” appeared after another long pause.  
Draco smiled and answered aloud “‘Night, pumpkin.”  
He knew that he had to get up to get ready for the night, but he couldn’t stop looking at the wobbly line of both their hands on the page. He put his hand once again over J.’s smiling and fell asleep.

Slow  
Harry had spent the night pacing. He looked at watch insistently, hoping that it was going to be morning soon. He needed to go see Hermione.   
The day before had started in the worst possible way. Both Mr Weasley and Hermione had written to him to tell him that they had no idea how the news had leaked, but someone was going to pay. Well, they hadn’t used those words, but Harry could read between lines. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel too bad about the wizarding world knowing, just exposed.  
He hadn’t written to D. the whole day, terrified at the idea that he could ask him his opinion on the matter. Then, D. had written to him something that was equally scary. Way to surprise him.  
As soon as the clock ticked to 8 he reached the fireplace with his hand firmly grasping a fist full of powder.  
He kneeled into the bright green flames ignoring the soot that dirtied his clothes and entered his mouth open in calling out. Ron ran into the room with his wand clutched in his right hand, relaxing immediately at the face of his friend. Then he looked worried. How he had managed to keep secrets with him for years, Harry didn’t know.   
“Mate,” said Ron surprised, “everything okay?”  
“Er,” answered Harry. He hated telling Ron when he needed Hermione more and vice versa, “I need to talk to ‘Mione.”   
He must have made quite a face because Ron just nodded and left the room. Harry took it as an invitation as any other to actually go there. He hated talking on the floo.  
“Goodmorning, Harry,” said Hermione crisply. Harry looked at her and nodded, suddenly uncertain with his own voice.   
Hermione offered him a cup filled with dark coffee and sat on the sofa sipping from her own cup.   
They stayed in silence for a long time and Harry started pacing the room occasionally passing his fingers through his hair in frustration.  
“I may like men.” he blurted out in the end refusing to look at her.  
When he finally turned to see her reaction she was still drinking calmly. Her face was turned slightly, but Harry could recognise, with a certain amount of annoyance, that she seemed to be smirking.  
“Yes,” she replied in the end, “You may.”  
Then she put her cup down on top of a stack of Quidditch magazines on the coffee table.  
“But thank you for telling me.”   
This made Harry remember when he had written exactly the same thing to D. the night before. He groaned and resumed pacing while taking big gulps from his still scalding coffee.  
“When did you notice?” asked Harry still annoyed at having her realize something before him as usual.   
“I didn’t,” she said, “Ron did.”   
At this, Harry looked at her square in the eyes, gaping.  
“In the sixth year,” she explained, “we talked a lot when you were with…” she let her voice trail down sadly. Harry shook his head, he didn’t have time to dwell with his guilt about Ginny now.  
“So,” he said slowly, “Ron started saying that I was gay because I was dating his sister and you believed him.”  
Hermione shook her head vehemently.  
“No,” she said quickly, “no, we were talking about your past relationships and Ron said that he wouldn’t have been surprised if you fancied blokes, too.”  
Harry kept staring at her in confusion.  
“Of course, initially I reached the same conclusion you had about it,” she continued, “and I told him that he could believe it if it helped him sleep at night, but then he started explaining his reasoning and it just made sense.”  
Harry snorted in disbelief.  
“He also told me the other night that he thinks you may have found someone,” she added shyly, “he just wasn’t sure if you weren’t telling us because you felt guilty about Ginny or because it was a man.”  
Harry suddenly felt like an idiot for asking to talk to Hermione instead of Ron.   
Harry reached the sofa and sat ungracefully next to Hermione.  
“He’s fine with it,” she added suddenly in the silence turning to face him.   
“We both are.”   
Harry sighed and passed a hand on his face, finally realising how tired he was.  
“I’d better catch some sleep.,” he said, “and I guess you have to go to work.”   
Hermione nodded, but before Harry could get up she let her small hand rest on his knee, “But I’m always there if you need me.” Her face was intent in a way that was usually reserved for exams and Harry felt the urge to hug her.   
Maybe that was why he wanted to tell her first. He hugged her tightly and got up before the threat of tears he felt at his eyes made itself real.   
“Should I…” he gestured towards the door where Ron had disappeared earlier, but Hermione shook her head making her hair bounce funnily.  
“He left for work already,” she smiled. “I’ll tell him you said bye later.”   
Harry arrived back at Grimmauld Place to face an angry looking Kreacher.  
He shrugged. He really didn’t have the force to argue with his elf’s strange logic.  
He trudged towards his bedroom yawning widely and wincing at the sound of his jaw crackling. In his bedside table, the book was still open and Harry noticed that the page looked like it had been crumpled and smoothed again. He looked at the wobbly lines of their hands and smiled. Maybe he should have been worried about what had happened the night before, but D. was always so composed when he wrote to him, that Harry could only think that he would have loved looking at him drunkenly trying to make sense.  
He took the book into his hands as he laid down and, slowly, he fell asleep.

Burn  
Draco hated himself.  
He stirred his potion counting the turns, but his brain was so used to the motion that it didn’t stop him from thinking over what had occurred two nights before.   
He stopped at exactly six turns anticlockwise and adder dried newts into the cauldron.  
He considered himself lucky that the previous day he was exactly the right mixture of sleepy, hangover and busy not to think about it, but today there was no escape. He coughed at the sudden burst of vapour, as usual, a resumed stirring.   
Maybe J. would stop writing to him. He hadn’t written anything the day before.   
Draco had definitely fucked up.  
But, Draco though, J. seemed like the kind of very nice person who would give people space if he thought they needed it.   
It was absolutely infuriating.   
Draco believed that everything would have been much clearer if he could only stop thinking about the sweet feeling of holding hands with a mysterious figure in his sleep.   
He groaned making Mr Flibwin look up from his papers.  
He looked down at the cauldron and then back at Draco when he had decided that the potion was going fine.  
“Keep your problems out of the job,” said Mr Flibwin gruffly. Draco nodded apologetically and cast a swift stasis spell on the potion to go gather the rest of the ingredients.   
On the corner of the workbench, the black book looked unavoidable. He had decided to take it with him at work in case he somehow gathered the courage to write some kind of apology to J. for his behaviour. He knew already that he wasn’t going to and it wasn’t without a certain degree of annoyance that he realised that he missed J..  
He took everything he needed, ready to be added to the potion, but he stopped a second to touch the coarse surface of the cover of the book. He wondered whether J. felt as lonely as he did.   
At the end of the day, Mr Flibwin complimented him. Well, he didn’t say anything negative about the potion at least.   
Normally, Draco would have been ecstatic, but he just felt sad at the idea that he couldn’t tell J. about it.   
He had dinner in silence, looking out of the window at the muggles walking around. He wondered if they also had families with expectations, dissatisfying jobs and strange relationship with strangers without whom they felt lost.  
He sighed and finally opened the book before he changed his mind.  
“J.,” he wrote hurriedly like he was afraid that if he didn’t do it fast enough the book was going to just burst into flames, “Sorry for the other night.”  
Not even a second later the first scratch of a black line appeared. Draco smiled and the chastised himself.   
“You have nothing to apologise for!”  
Draco swallowed uncertainly. He knew what he had to do, but it was painful.  
“Thank you for being such a good friend.” he wrote, but he didn’t believe it himself. He knew that J. had at least partly meant something and he was certain that he had.   
While he was writing his reply a stark “I” had appeared in J.’s handwriting, but then it stopped there. It wasn’t the first time that they had written simultaneously, but it was the first time that it had stopped J. from saying what he meant to.  
“Sure.” It was darker than usual like he had written it without meaning to. “Anytime.”  
Draco felt his chest burn. He wanted to retract everything, to know what J. had meant to tell him.   
He didn’t dare to hope, and anyway it was too late now.   
They both knew that something had shifted in their relationship, despite Draco’s refusal to accept it. It was awful and painful but, Draco sighed, the right thing to do.  
“Sorry, I’m going to bed.” J. wrote suddenly, “Goodnight, D.”   
And Draco felt like he had slapped him. He wondered if the pit that he felt deep into his guts was ever going to disappear. 

Wings  
The fact that Teddy had grown so much since the last time Harry had seen him was bittersweet.  
He had run into the living room knocking a vase over under the resigned look of his grandmother, yelling Harry’s name with unbridled joy.  
It wasn’t really helping to ease his guilt.   
Andromeda hugged him in her strange way that showed that she wasn’t as used to the gesture as she was to the idea.   
They exchanged their usual circumstantial greeting that Andromeda seemed to be so fond of, but soon Teddy had demanded his godfather’s attention regarding the very important matter of the choice of the bestest pumpkin for Halloween and that made Harry’s heart clench only a little bit.   
They sat on the floor under the imposing gaze of Andromeda discussing the pros and cons of the various types of orange. Teddy’s hair was slowly morphing to Harry’s dark colour and, as usual, Harry felt conflicted in seeing Remus’ pale brown disappear.   
“Uncle Hawwy,” said Teddy when he noticed Harry’s attention slip from the task at hand, “you going to be here for ‘awwin?”   
Harry blinked rapidly trying to decipher, “For Halloween?” he asked stupidly and Teddy nodded like he was dealing with some exasperating dummy. Harry smiled thinking that he must have taken it from his grandmother.  
“Yes, of course,” he said feeling his smile grow.   
He knew perfectly well why he didn’t want to spend too much time with Teddy, and he wasn’t proud of it, but every time he was actually there, he wondered if he was just being stupid. He eyed Andromeda who was looking at them placidly and wondered how she did it.   
“I’m gong be a ghost!” he said excitedly, “and you?”  
Harry pondered for a second, making the scene of actually scratching his chin.   
“I could be puffskein,” he said feeling the rough texture of his beard.   
“A what?” asked Teddy confused.  
“A puff, honey,” answered Andromeda with an amused expression.  
“Nooooo,” yelled Teddy rising from the carpet and almost climbing Harry, “You hafta be something what is scawy!”  
“Oh,” said Harry feigning shock, “Than I could be a mooncalf.”   
Teddy giggled still standing on Harry’s crossed legs painfully, “That’s no scawy, too.”   
“Mh,” tried Harry again, “A flobberworm!”  
Teddy shook his head. “That’s disgusty, not scawy!”  
They kept playing this game a little longer with Harry proposing more and more ridiculous creatures and Teddy telling him why they weren’t scary. Suddenly, Teddy seemed to find the game boring and started demanding loudly and right into Harry’s year to play pretend Quidditch. Harry was, apparently, the perfect pretend broomstick.  
When Andromeda told Teddy that it was time for his nap a small riot happened. Harry knew that he wouldn’t soon forget the screeching.   
“We need to do something about the way he talks,” Said Andromeda finally sitting down next to Harry who had been banned from Teddy’s bedroom.  
Harry shrugged noncommittedly. He found it adorable and he was in no hurry to stop hearing Teddy yell “Uncle Hawwy” when he saw him.  
Andromeda sighed and looked at him.  
“You look angry,” she said, then smirked, “and I mean it in the best possible way.”   
Harry knew exactly what she meant, but didn’t know how to answer that. He nodded.  
“Is it about the prophet?” she asked somehow managing to sound concerned despite her cold expression.  
Harry winced. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten about it.  
“Not really,” he said slowly. He thought briefly about how much he could tell her. He wasn’t certain of her reaction to the news that her grandson’s godfather fancied men, too.  
“I tried confessing my feelings to someone and they stopped me by telling me how grateful they were of my friendship.”   
Andromeda’s eyebrows raised in surprise for a second, then she burst out laughing.  
Harry looked at her in shock.  
She rapidly collected herself, but the mirth seemed to be burning in her pale grey eyes in a way that made her look painfully like Sirius.  
“I believe I did the same thing to my poor Ted,” she explained, and Harry noticed that there was sadness in there, too.  
Harry looked at his hands, in silence. He hadn’t really had a chance to know Ted Tonks, but he still felt the burden of not having been good enough to spare another innocent life.   
“But of course,” Andromeda continued after a brief pause, “He was a practical man.” She smiled and eyes at the empty chair where he had met the man years before, “he saw right through it and just told me about his feelings anyway.”   
Harry looked at her eager and scared to know the rest of the story, but Andromeda just smiled and said.   
“You have found yourself a man up for a challenge.”   
Harry gaped and Andromeda patted him on the shoulder knowingly.   
“You better go before Teddy wakes expecting to carve the pumpkin tonight.” she said rising swiftly from the sofa, “Or before you change your mind.”  
She left the room dismissing him and Harry just looked at the door though where she had disappeared in shock. He got up quickly and almost ran to the fireplace. The seconds he spent in the floo network seemed hour and so was his fast step up the staircase of Grimmauld Place. He got the book and, still standing, wrote: “I like you.”   
There was no response, but usually D. was working at this time of the day, so he explained, “as in, I have feelings for you.”  
He closed the book, groaned and fell into bed restlessly.

Love  
Draco woke up feeling like he had gone to sleep only minutes before. He checked the clock in the room and sighed when he saw that he only had about a couple of minutes to spare before he had to get up. He rolled around the crisp blankets squeezing his eyes shut in a vain hope to get some rest that way.   
He got up and sat at the side of the bed for a long minute, wondering, once again, why he was working, exactly.   
He cleared his throat and looked sleepily out of the window where the sun had already risen.   
He pointed his wand and lazily accioed the coffee cup he had left the night before imagining his mother’s horrified face at seeing him have breakfast with just a coffee and on the bed. Sometimes he missed her shocked expressions.   
He smirked in his cup considering where life had led him. On his dresser, the light caught the dark spine of the book he had refused to open since the morning before when he had hoped to see J. ramblings.   
Draco had left it out of reach from his bed because he wasn’t sure on how he would have reacted at seeing the empty page after J.’s cold dismissal.   
He sighed again unable to tear his eyes away from the book.   
He felt his legs move to go get it before he had even rationalised it.   
He took a deep breath not sure what to expect and opened it.   
That. That he hadn’t expected. At all.  
He felt his arms beginning to shake and his heart starting to beat so strongly that he was sure it was going to break free from his chest.  
He closed the book with a thud and let it fall on the carpet at his feet. A corner fell heavily onto his toe. He kept seeing starkly against nothing the hurried letters.  
“I like you. As in, I have feelings for you.”  
He suddenly felt like screaming and he wasn’t sure if it was going to be in joy or terror.  
“I like you,” he mouthed, confused.  
“I like you,” he repeated, louder, barely fighting the smile and then the grimace.  
He started getting ready for work alternating moments of happiness and dread without a logic.  
He apparated at work with a dumbfounded expression that forced Mr Flibwin to actually look at him in concern.   
Not even three hours later, Draco had ruined four potions and had been sent home. But Draco didn’t want to go home. He wanted to go to J.’s and look at his face when he told him that he liked him, he wanted to enter the diary and live there forever, without any worry.   
Then he wanted to run away and burn the damn thing. It was stupid, but he worried for one second that that would actually kill J..  
Oh Merlin, he thought, I fell for a piece of paper.  
But he knew that it was a lie, that somewhere J. was a real person and he. liked. him!   
His cheeks were hurting from changing expression so often in such a short amount of time and his brain ached from the same reason.   
He finally opened the book again standing in the middle of a muggle road and mouthed the words again. He finally let his smile win. Not a single time in his life he had let himself jump into something so stupid without thinking thoroughly of the consequences.  
And look where thinking it through had led him, he thought bitterly.  
He started running with the book still clutched in his hands. He was barely at home and he saw the witch next door open the main door with a heavy bag of groceries hanging from her arm.  
“Good day, isn’t it?” he said with a mock bow as a greeting.  
The witch let her keys fall in shock and Draco swiftly took them from the ground.  
He opened the door for her and considered asking her whether she needed help with her groceries, then he remembered that he wasn’t a good person and run up the stairs. He was breathless for more than one reason when he grabbed forcefully at the quill he always left next to the foyer and wrote as slowly and beautifully as possible:  
“Me too.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I am a silly cow and I lost this whole chapter months ago somewhere in the mess of my apartment.   
> I still have to write the last part but at least I haven't started yet, so I should be able to write it presently (one can only hope). Thank you for your patience. I felt the love <3

Silk  
Harry was scared.   
It was normal, he reasoned with himself.  
He gripped at the quill and reread the “Me too.” written clearly.   
And nothing else. Did it mean that they were a thing?   
He hated being so bad at this kind of things. Writing about his feelings had been easy, all things considered.  
He wondered if he could just write something like “Good, then let’s be a couple, my name is Harry Potter.”   
He shook his head at his own stupidity.   
In the end, he decided not to think about it too much.  
“I don’t know where to go from here, to be honest.”  
He looked at the blank page. He knew that D. was reading on the other side. He knew.   
It was like he could feel the heat of his body lingering on the book. He wouldn’t put it past the charm.  
It was a good thought. He smiled.  
“Likewise.” was the simple response, even if it had taken such a long time to be composed.  
“Should we tell each other who we are?” Harry wrote, but he secretly hoped that the answer was going to be negative.  
“I’d rather not.”   
Harry smirked when he recognised that it had been his exact response at the beginning of their correspondence. It seemed like months had passed.  
“Are we a couple?” he asked frowning immediately after.   
“I don’t know.” again, the answer was incredibly short considering how long it had taken to appear on the page.  
“Can’t we just” came up immediately after, but it seemed like D. wasn’t sure of what the could “just” do, “talk normally.”  
Harry groaned. As if it was that easy.  
“I kind of missed you these days.”   
Harry blushed. He agreed with D..   
It felt strange to be able not to suppress these thoughts. To be able to write them down, to tell D. that one night without hearing him was long and dull. To say that he had waited hours for him to come back home from work.   
He supposed that that was the real difference.  
“Me too,” he wrote unthinkingly, “it’s boring not hearing you moan about your job.”  
He stopped only one second, embarrassed. Not a good choice of word.   
“They sent me home yesterday.” D. wrote and Harry almost felt his annoyance.  
“Why?” he asked curiously.  
“I was distracted.” D. replied curtly, “I blame you.”  
Harry laughed out loud and it was refreshing.  
“Why would you blame me? I had already told you how I felt.” he wrote hoping that they could actually talk about it. “You are the one that waited so long to answer.”  
Harry read again what he had written and decided that if he had to be direct, he could be it through and through.  
“And I know that you had read my answer.”  
D. took another long pause. Harry imagined a faceless person looking at the page in horror and hated not being able to know if he had a flat nose, or if his eyes were dark, or if his hair fell on his eyes annoyingly.   
“How do you know that I had read the answer?”  
Harry wanted to say something cheeky, or even sarcastic, but this new possibility, the chance to say exactly what he felt, was still raw and exciting.  
“I can feel your heat through the book.”   
He felt himself blush, but a smile grew on his face at the thought that probably D. was blushing, too.  
“That’s” D. started replying and paused again, “intimate. I didn’t notice.”  
“Can you feel me, now?” asked Harry trying not to think of the implication of what he was writing.  
“Yes.”  
Merlin, he loved how D. wrote it. A silky feeling of contentedness surrounded him like a cloak.   
“J.,” wrote D. after a while. “have you ever” again, he stopped. Harry understood perfectly how it felt. “been with a man?”  
Harry pondered over the question. Not because he didn’t know that he had never been with a man, that much was obvious, but because he wasn’t sure how to answer that.  
“I didn’t know that I liked men.” he decided in the end. “Until I saw your hand apparently,” he added.  
It wasn’t the first time that he was sorry he couldn’t see D.’s reaction to his words, but tonight was worse than ever.   
D. didn’t respond for a long time and Harry took the time to go look at the crumpled page where the lines of their hand intertwined. He traced the ink of D.’s hand softly wondering if D. was doing the same.  
He went back to the page on which they were writing to see the words “Touch the page.” appear.   
He did it and blushed again, fiercely, when he felt the heat of another hand moving on the surface to adjust to his.   
“Will you make fun of me if I ask you if we can stay like this for a while?” He wrote on the corner of the page to avoid his hand still pressed on the paper.   
“Please.” was the short answer, but this time, Harry didn’t have to wait at all.

Bind  
They had fallen asleep holding hands.  
Draco passed a hand, the same hand, on his face feeling it warm in embarrassment. He thought of the cheesy novels that Pansy and Daphne sneaked into the library during their study sessions and how much he had scorned at them. He really had fallen asleep pushing his hands on a piece of paper to feel somebody else's heat.  
He was so grateful that J. couldn’t see his face reddening like a tomato at the thought.  
“Draco,” his mother’s voice travelled through the dusty corridor followed by the clicking sound of her shoes on the stone floor of the Manor.  
“Draco, darling,” she repeated looking inside the room.  
“You do like this room,” she said when she noticed him sitting at the desk of his grandfather’s office.  
Draco didn’t answer but smiled thin-lipped at her.   
“Lunch will be ready soon. Why don’t we walk together?” she said looking around the room quite pointedly. He could tell that an unpleasant discussion was awaiting him at the lunch table if his mother had walked around the manor looking for him instead of sending a house elf.   
He raised from his chair slowly, feeling surprisingly tired considering how well he had felt waking up.  
They walked in a tense silence that he was used to linking to his father’s presence and the dread that he had started feeling at the base of his throat when he had flooed in his parents’ entrance parlour, grew choking him.  
Lucius was sitting alone at the long table when they entered. He glanced at his wife as if discerning if she had said something she shouldn't. Draco considered the idea of running away, but he sat touching briefly the book in the big pocket of his robes.  
“Draco,” said Lucius clearing his throat slightly. The food hadn’t arrived yet, “you must know” he continued raising his voice at “must”, “that as a Malfoy you have certain obligations towards your family.”   
Draco had to force his legs to stop trembling. He knew exactly what this discussion was going to be about. He had known for months, maybe years, that it was coming.  
“I understand,” Lucius went on, “that you had this- this silly idea of going to work as a common mu- wizard,” Draco looked at his plate being filled and eyed at Narcissa that was doing the same, “and I have been happy to accommodate your ridiculous request.”  
Draco snorted and felt his father’s gaze shift even without looking at him.  
“However, now it is time for you to find a wife and bind the Malfoy with another respectable pureblooded family.”  
Draco kept looking at his plate. His hands next to the heavy fork quivered as he breathed deeply. Was it time?  
He looked up and, finally, Narcissa was staring at him. He studied her expression, the signs of recognition in her grey eyes, then she shook her head. Almost unnoticeable.   
She knew. Draco felt sick.   
She knew and she was telling him not to tell Lucius.   
For the first time in his life, Draco hated her.  
“I will think about it.” He said simply, marvelling at how calm he could make his voice sound.   
Lucius wasn’t satisfied. Draco could see it clearly from his stormy eyes.  
There was a long, tense silence broken only by the sound of three people finally eating their food. His parents started chatting idly of the latest gossip and, often, they discussed families whose daughters were close to Draco’s age. Draco wondered if they weren’t trying to be subtle or if he had been honed too much into their subtlety not to notice. Both prospects were terrifying.  
They walked with him to the parlour. Lucius hugged him in his usual cold manner that Draco had always admired and now hated. He walked away, slowly, leaning on his cane and Draco asked himself when his father had gotten so old.   
“Draco,” said Narcissa in a low voice that was almost a whisper. Draco looked at her waiting. For an apology, for an excuse, even for an accusation. But Narcissa only inched closer to touch his face. He was taller than her, and thinking about that, he realised that he was also taller than his father.   
“Draco,” she repeated, and now it seemed like she wanted to cry, “he wouldn’t understand.”  
Draco shook his head.   
“And what am I supposed to do about that?” he replied with shame at how much his voice trembled.  
She sniffed and hugged him.   
“I will always love you,” she said against his chest. Draco believed her, but for some reason, it didn’t make him feel any better.  
His apartment looked emptier than usual. He was slouching on a kitchen chair, fighting against the feeling of tears in his eyes, when he felt the book get warmer into his chest. He fished it quickly, still shaking from his nerves.  
“So, D.,” was already on the page, “I was thinking, how much do you know about carnivorous plants?”  
Draco snorted and looked around the bare apartment. Maybe a plant would help.  
“Only that some are useful for potions.”  
“Meh, lame!”   
“What’s lame?” he asked smiling over his discomfort.  
“Potions. Never liked them.”   
Draco laughed at the irony. Maybe he should tell him. He shook his head: the wizarding world was too small.  
“I absolutely adore potions!”   
“I should have expected that!” wrote J. immediately.  
Draco was trying to decide if he was supposed to get offended, but J. beat him.  
“Why are you down?”  
Draco immediately reread their exchange. How did he know?  
“Your writing looks sad,” he explained unprompted.   
Draco blinked. How did writing look sad? But he was sad, so J. must have seen something.  
“I fought with my parents.” he looked at the words trying to see where the sadness was.  
“Well, it’s more like I have been disappointed by my parents.”  
J. didn’t respond for a while and Draco remembered that he didn’t have any family. He bit his lip, maybe it was a bit insensitive.  
“I want to tell that I am sure they meant well, but I suppose you wouldn’t appreciate it.”  
Draco smirked. That was a very accurate answer.  
“You wouldn’t either: they want me to get married.”  
He avoided telling him that they wanted him to get married, yes, but with a pureblood witch of their choosing and that his mother had implicitly told him to keep his homosexuality a secret. People were strange: he seriously hated them for this, but even while venting with J., in some way he wanted to protect them.  
“Ah.” was the simple answer. Draco knew the question that was coming, he knew that he was going to get angry at J. for asking him if he wanted to go through with it and he knew how unfair that was.   
“Well, I imagine you are not going to do that.”   
That was surprising. Draco blinked.  
“I mean,” appeared immediately, “not for me. You just don’t seem like the type that would let someone else decide for himself.”  
Draco looked down at the letters slowly coming up on the crisp page.   
He shook his head, somewhat surprised at the wet feeling of tears despite their presence at the borders of his vision for hours.   
How could he explain that he was exactly that kind of person? That he had always been.  
Draco rubbed at his eyes, feeling them heavy.   
“Would you hate me if I told you that I am that person? I can’t stop being that person.”  
It was hard to write. He felt naked and raw.   
“It’s our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”  
Draco snorted. Easy to say.  
“Nice words. Yours?” he wrote hating himself for our derisive they sounded, even in his head.  
“No.” Wrote J., and there was a quietness in his words that Draco could not explain to himself. “Albus Dumbledore.”  
Draco snorted again and felt the tears reach his chin and his breathing slowly morphing into a sob. That blasted old man would not have peace until he gave him a second chance.  
“I’ll take it.” he wrote simply.

Mask  
Harry looked at the sun rising slowly.   
D. had fallen asleep hours earlier, but Harry just couldn’t. He didn’t envy him for having to wake up and go to work. He wondered whether they would be able to talk at night.  
He felt a smile pull at the corner of his lips.   
He covered his face with a hand feeling the grin grow under his palm.   
It was just strange to fee so much. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed it.  
He rolled around the blankets. He wondered briefly how long this sense of fulfilment could last, how long until he had to face the harsh reality of having fallen for a person whose identity he didn’t know, how long until Hermione made him reason on the danger of opening up to a magic book. Again.   
And yet, he wanted to tell them so much. He felt like yelling from the top of his lungs how amazing it felt.   
If only he could stop smiling like an idiot. He was going to ask Ron out for a beer, he decided. He owed him one. Maybe even Neville. He hadn’t been the greatest of friends for, well, a while.   
Harry looked at the clock in the room slowly ticking towards 7 am and wondered if D. was going to wake up soon.   
He groaned rolling around. He needed a job.   
Maybe if he went back to the ministry they would let him complete the Auror training program from where he had left it a few months before. They would make an exception for him.   
He wasn’t sure that that was a good thing.   
To be honest with himself he didn’t really like the idea of working for the ministry at all. He tried to recollect his O.W.L. thinking at what to do with them.   
It was with a sudden jolt that he remembered that he was not able to do magic anymore. Maybe he had to accept he was now a squib. He scrunched his nose thinking of how bitter Filch was.   
He looked at his right hand. He felt clearly the magic flow under his skin. He knew it was there, just out of reach. It was a strange itchy feeling.   
Just like D., really.   
He had made a habit to touch the page, looking for his warmth on the page. He thought that D. must have noticed it because he often felt him do the same.  
He liked a man.   
He had thought about it many times in the last few days and every single time he felt a jolt of fear and curiosity. He wasn’t really certain of the dynamics and for once it felt wise not to ask Hermione for help. Harry touched his own breast curiously, feeling immensely stupid. Could it be sexy? He remembered Ginny’s plump breasts and how much he had liked the velvety feeling of her skin there. In contrast, he felt the taut skin of his chest dubiously. He surprised himself into thinking that he would miss them. After months of not feeling anything even remotely sexual, suddenly the idea of not being able to have sex was unbearable. He eyed at the door suspiciously then gazed longingly at his useless wand.   
“Damn,” he murmured into the bright light of the rising sun.  
He got up, disgruntled. He opened the door slightly and looked both ways in the corridor. There was no sign of Kreacher. He smirked and closed the door, locking it behind his back. He felt rebellious like he felt every time that he wanted to have a wank with the Dursleys home. He almost jumped under the covers and hastily moved the book away in his nightstand. He sighed deeply, already satisfied, just for the fact that he really, really wanted to jerk off. He adjusted his cock in his pyjama finding a comfortable position and, suddenly, he stopped.   
What was he supposed to think about? He couldn’t think a person because that felt like cheating, somehow and he was suddenly scared that he wouldn’t be able to come just thinking of men.   
A nasty voice in his mind reminded him that he had done it in the past and conveniently forgotten about it. He blushed groaning stressfully against the comforter.   
His cock was slowly losing interest and Harry wanted to punch something.   
He grabbed one of the books on the nightstand nervously, giving up on the idea of finally wanking after months.  
“Shit,” he said a bit too loudly in the silence of the house. The book was the one about carnivorous plants. It made him think of Neville and that didn’t help the situation.   
He ruffled through the pages fitfully.  
He had made it. He had found the least sexy book on earth.  
He was reading about a plant with a long complex name that was mainly used in potions and thought of D. again. He seemed to really like potions. He closed the book with a thud and hit himself in the forehead with it. He wanted to think about him and, at the same time, to stop obsessing over him.   
He took the black book almost throwing the herbology book on the floor. Of course, there was nothing under the fine letters “Goodnight, pumpkin.” that D. had written hours before.   
He went back to the first page and looked with a smile at the first line they’d ever exchanged. It was strange to think how little time had passed since D.’s first “Yes”  
He scrolled through the pages feeling his smile grow again. It almost took him by surprise when he reached the page where D. had drunkenly asked him to draw his hand. The page was still slightly crumpled. Harry smirked, wondering why D. had reduced it like that. He was going to ask him that night, he decided. His amusement disappeared suddenly and, instead, he felt a hot blush rolling all over his body at the sudden image of a thin hand gripping at the page. He looked down at his body with astonishment. That apparently was enough.  
“Yes!” he said letting the book fall on his chest and gripping his hard cock. He closed his eyes and focused on the idea of that same hand gripping him. He remembered its heat against the page and regretted his eternally cold hands. It was rough and unrefined and Harry was loving it. He opened his eyes when a particularly rough jerk had made him jolt. It was all too dry and he knew that he should have taken his time, but he felt hot all over. With his eyes open he could barely see the frayed edge of the page. He gripped at his cock pulling almost painfully, his chest heaving and moving the book so that he could see the much more precise shape of D.’s hand over his own. It was with a start that he felt his muscle contract. He was coming and his mind was full of images of hands touching him.   
Merlin, he wanted it so much.   
He rolled around the bed in a spasm. The book slipped from over him and he felt it digging into his hip. His glasses creaked against his face where they were pressed against the pillow which masked his groan.   
The warm wetness spread slowly between his body and the blankets and Harry couldn’t find the force to regret it. He kept his face pressed into the pillow and his hand lax under his hips with his eyes closed. It was only minutes later that he found the strength to get up to clean.   
His eyes widened at the condition of his room. It was like a small hurricane had entered it moving all the furniture. He immediately looked at his hands feeling his magic pulsing.   
That was going to be complicated to explain to Hermione.

 

Music  
Daphne leaned towards Blaise with a grin. Draco couldn’t hear what they were saying over the sound of the lively pub.  
He looked around the various assortment of people drunkenly chatting about their lives. Someone behind him was loudly recounting his meeting with a veela in the south of Turkey. Draco was only mildly interested. He sniffed quietly at his wine glass, pretending to notice its superior quality. He knew that it had to be expensive because Blaise had presented it at the table with a small flourish that he reserved to the finest of things. Draco privately thought that it smelled of wine. Daphne was still smiling when Draco looked at her and, he couldn’t believe his eyes, so was Blaise.  
Behind him, the loud guy had just finished telling how he managed to survive after the veela had tried to convince him to jump off a cliff. Now Draco was certain that he was lying. Or confusing creatures, at least.  
Why was he there?  
Sitting at his table there were only Blaise and Daphne, all full of smiles and crinkled eyes. When Blaise had invited him to Daphne’s engagement party it had taken him a whole minute to realise that he didn’t mean of the two of them. He had always thought that there was something between them. Judging by Blaise’s satisfied smirk it wasn’t the case.  
It was odd to think that Daphne was moving to Spain. He had always kind of known her. His father wouldn’t have allowed anything more: there were rumours a muggle union somewhere in her genealogy. Certainly, he seemed to have changed his mind recently. At least judging by the insistence in talking about Daphne and her sister.  
Draco hid a grimace in his glass.  
“Draco,” said Daphne loudly over the noise, “what about you?”  
Draco looked at her questioningly and she giggled shaking her head.  
“Anyone special in your life?” she explained.  
“Except Mr Flibwin,” specified Blaise with a smirk.  
Draco was tempted to flip him off, instead, he decided to smile mysteriously.  
“Perhaps,” he said simply.  
Blaise widened his eyes and looked around, quite frantically.  
Not for the first time, Draco wondered how much he knew.  
“Ow,” said Daphne loudly, “my sister is going to be so disappointed!”  
Then she looked shocked and covered her mouth, “I wasn’t supposed to tell you!”  
Blaise laughed next to her, but he still looked uncomfortable.  
“I think even a blind troll would know of Astoria’s crush.” Said Draco mildly.  
He exchanged a pleading look with Blaise. He nodded minutely and fashionably changed the subject. Draco decided that he had to learn how to do that.  
“Ah,” said Blaise suddenly, “look who descended among us mortals.” He pointed with his chin at the entrance where Longbottom and Weasley were laughing while removing their scarves. Behind them, looking worriedly at the floor, was Harry Potter. The pub suddenly filled with murmurs and whispers.  
“You reckon it’s true?” asked the loud guy behind Draco.  
“Nah,” said a drunken voice, “He can’t have lost it.”  
Potter looked distinctly unwell but, Draco didn’t know why he noticed, better than the last time he had seen him only a couple of months before.  
He was still too pale and his beard was too unruly, but he had put on some weight and it seemed that he had at least tried to comb his hair out of the way.  
He wasn’t laughing with Longbottom and Weasley, but he had a small smile and his eyes, behind the concern, were bright with amusement.  
“Good for him,” whispered Draco unthinkingly.  
Blaise looked at him as if he had heard, which Draco doubted.  
Surprisingly, Longbottom looked over their table and smiled broadly.  
“Zabini,” he said walking towards them. Weasley and Potter looked at each other and followed.  
“So nice to see you, pal!” And Both Draco and Astoria were shocked because Blaise had been the one to say it.  
Draco pretended to be interested in his wine once again, but Potter was so close and he had never been good at ignoring him.  
They eyed each other and nodded as politely as they could, but Potter looked surprised and didn’t seem interested in looking away. Potter gazed at his hands on the table. Draco moved them uncomfortably under the table, almost spilling his wine.  
Surprisingly, Longbottom was the one who saved Draco from the most awkward encounter he had ever experienced.  
“Malfoy, what did you think of the mandrake roots I have sent Mr Flibwin?” He asked jovially, “I am particularly proud of their scream this season.”  
Draco forced a smirk still painfully aware of Potter’s eyes on him.  
“You will be happy to know that they almost killed at least 3 trainees.”  
Longbottom laughed again and Blaise smiled at him. It was a strange notion to realise that he seemed to honestly like him.  
Weasley coughed a little effectively interrupting the chatter. Longbottom nodded in understanding a bid everyone goodbye with a friendly: “I suppose that congratulations are in order, Ms Greengrass.”  
Draco was absolutely stupefied by the smoothness and definitely not surprised in seeing her blush deeply.  
He then nodded again and patted Blaise’s shoulder friendly before leaving.  
Potter stood just a second longer, still looking at Draco with insistence. He barely moved his head towards the table and left, silently.  
“Well,” said Daphne as soon as her cheek had turned back to her rosy paleness, “that was interesting.”  
Draco nodded, but instead of joining their conversation on how well Longbottom had turned out, he spied a small table in the corner where Potter had just removed his coat.  
“Nice ass,” thought Draco. He shook his head and turned to his friends. He was ashamed, but he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t just thought: “I hope J.’s eyes are green.”  
He ostensibly refused to look at Potter’s table again for the rest of the night. The last glimpse of him he caught had been outside the pub where both Weasley and Longbottom where drunkenly leaning against the brick wall of the pub, their wands out, waiting for the knight bus.  
Potter’s hands were deep in his pocket. Draco pretended not to notice that he clearly didn’t have his wand with him.  
He apparated in his empty living room. The only thing out of place was the black book on the coffee table.  
He let himself fall on the sofa.  
The book was cold and Draco suddenly noticed that the fire was out. He shivered and got the book, ready to get to bed under his warmest blanket.  
He got ready for the night in silence, already missing the noise of the pub which had annoyed him so much just a few hours earlier.  
He opened the book with a sigh.  
“What colour are your eyes?” was written shakily when he opened the book.  
He blinked and looked again. The ink seemed fresh.  
“I don’t think I can tell you that.” He wrote feeling a knot in his throat. He wanted to tell him if nothing to be able to ask him if his eyes were green, which was stupid.  
“Yes, sorry.” J. replied, “Stupid question.”  
Draco wanted to write that it wasn’t stupid, that he wanted to know, too.  
There was a long pause where Draco kept thinking of something, anything, to make the small dread growing in his stomach disappear.  
“Can I touch your hand?” Wrote J. Again, his blocky writing was somewhat shaky.  
Draco didn’t write his answer. Instead, he just touched the page already heated in the shape of J.’s hand.  
“Do you like music?” Asked J. Draco was grateful that, again, someone had been better than him at changing the subject.  
He smiled and started writing about the time that Pansy had convinced him to learn to play the guitar so that they could start a rock band. They were 13.  
Neither of them talked about the strange exchange at the beginning, nor of their hand touching, but while the dread had disappeared after a while, J.’s heat against his hand hadn’t.

Eyes  
Draco Malfoy.  
Harry stared at the blank page of the book, where D.’s heat had just disappeared.  
He had no reason to believe that D. was Draco Malfoy, but somehow he was so sure.  
He briefly recollected all the little tidbits of knowledge he had on Draco Malfoy and applied them to his D. and it made so much sense that Harry wanted to scream.  
He really wanted to be more opposed at the thought but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking that the scariest thing was Malfoy finding out it was him.  
Harry looked outside briefly blinded by the sunlight reflecting on an endless carpet of bright grey clouds.   
Like his eyes, he thought.  
He only looked away when he heard the roaring sound of the floo getting activated in the foyer, followed by the cracking sound of Kreacher welcoming a guest. He tried to quantify how long he had just spent looking at the morning sky, but he had no idea.  
A series of light footsteps told him that Hermione was briskly walking up the stairs and, in any other moment in his life, he would have rushed to make himself presentable.   
Instead, when she entered she found him still in bed with his head craned to observe the light slowly travelling westward.   
“You look better,” she said as a greeting and Harry snorted.  
“No,” she continued, “you really do.”  
“I don’t really feel it,” he murmured finally looking at her.  
“Yes, you do,” she said in her usual cryptical manner.  
She sat on his bed pushing the hem of her pencil skirt over her knees and Harry wondered if he also looked like a child in adult clothes.  
“What’s that?” she said nodding towards the black book resting on Harry’s clothed lap.  
“A journal,” he said simply thinking that lying to one’s best friend shouldn’t come this easily.  
She nodded, satisfied.  
“Ron told me that you had something you wanted to discuss,” she said slowly after a long moment of silence.  
Harry looked down at the book. He had been almost certain that he was going to tell her about D. but that was before.  
“I made magic,” he said simply, looking at his bedside table.  
He felt Hermione shift on the bed and he imagined her eyes getting big and round in surprise and a smile form on her small face.  
“It wasn’t on purpose,” he specified before she could get her hopes up and looked at her in time to see her happy feature morph in concern.  
“I was-” he gestured blandly with his hand, “otherwise occupied at the time.”  
She opened her mouth ready to ask him but, fortunately, a small frown of recognition crossed her face.  
He wasn’t certain she understood how, but at least she knew it was embarrassing.  
“Oh,” she almost whispered, “I see.”  
Harry honestly hoped she didn’t.  
“Er,” she tried to talk again after a while, “what happened?”  
Harry made his tongue click in his mouth, unsure.  
“I mean,” she added and she was close to purple in colour, “with the magic. What sort of magic did you do?”  
“I moved things,” he said turning back to look at the bedside table like he was willing it to move to prove his point.  
“Well,” she said briskly when Harry refused to elaborate, “while not ideal, I think it’s a good sign?”   
It would have been almost convincing if it wasn’t for the small inquisitive tilt at the end of the sentence.  
Silence fell again and they both pointedly refused to look at each other.  
“Were you, like, with someone?”  
Harry finally looked at her in shock. She HAD understood.  
“No!” he said feeling his cheeks burn.  
“Okay,” she said almost defensively, “Okay!” she repeated.  
“I want to specify how much how would love not to have this conversation,” she started again after another moment of silence, “but had you ever, you know, done something like this since you lost your magic.”  
Harry blinked twice, rapidly.   
Some childish part of him was tempted to say “Yes, of course, I am a man after all.” but it felt stupid, even in his mind.  
He shook his head looking down at the covers.  
Hermione touched his shoulder, tentatively, like she didn’t know whether it was welcome and Harry hated himself for ever letting her think that she wasn’t.  
“Harry,” she said looking for his eyes, “everything will be alright.”  
There was a small concerned smile on her face, but he somehow believed her.  
She leaned in and kissed his cheek and left with a promise of further research.  
Harry got up and started pacing the house looking for answers in the dark mouldy corners.   
He paced in the narrow corridors where the scarce light still unkindly showed the slow dance of dust. Under his bare feet, he noticed the unregular pattern of the carpet which was softer closer to long-closed rooms and almost reduced to nothing in the worn paths that lead to the main room. He followed the threadbare carpet looking for some kind of proof that the house had once been home to someone. That Sirius and Regulus might have taken their first wobbly steps exactly where he was standing under the pinched face of their mother. Or maybe even she had smiled.   
He smiled sadly following the path delicately touching the walls. A layer of grime made his fingers oily and dark.  
Of course, he ended up crouched on the floor of the drawing room looking at the fine, silver thread that read “Draco Malfoy”.  
He sighed wishing, not for the first time, to be less nice.  
He got up with a groan and paced rapidly up the stairs where he got hold of the book before he could change his mind.  
“Whatever their colour, they must be lovely.”   
He looked at the ink drying on the page a smiled.  
“Your eyes, I mean.”

 

Moon  
Draco stopped walking only when he reached the door of the conservatory. it felt like he had started walking when he got up from the bed and never stopped. There was an all-encompassing nervous tension going through his limbs that made his fingers numb against the polished brass of the door handle. He knew that his mother was sitting on the other side of the door, slowly sipping her morning tea.  
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to knock or barge in. He kept palming the handle until it became warm under his fingers.   
He sighed, almost letting his head rest against the cool wood. In the end, he did neither and slowly opened the door ignoring the gleam of light momentarily blinding him.  
He caught his mother mid-sip. Her lips were already pursed in the act of drinking, but the cup was hovering millimetres away from her mouth.  
The sound of china against china was covered by the loud sigh that escaped her.   
“Draco, darling,” she said slowly resting the cup on a small ornate table, “I was expecting you.”  
Draco believed her, but only in part.   
He nodded in greeting and started marching towards the armchair on the opposite side of the table. At his feet, he heard the nervous tip-tap of the elves rushing to get a cup for him.  
Draco had spent the night thinking. He had been tempted to write down a sort of speech, to make his ideas cemented on a thin sheet of paper, but seeing Narcissa’s thin shoulder hunched for maybe the first time in his life, he was glad he could at least try to make it more human.   
“I am not going to get married,” he exhaled.  
His mother looked at his face studiously and nodded, but there was a pained frown which made her look older than he had ever seen her.   
“He won’t understand,” she said simply, cool, if not for the slight tremor of her hands clutched on her lap.   
An elf came back holding a small cup from which the distinct smell of black tea rose like a comforting cloud.  
“And do you?” he asked taking the cup with no intention of drinking. He felt like he didn’t have the luxury to keep his mouth occupied in case he had to answer and leave.  
Knowing he may never come back.  
Surprisingly, Narcissa smirked.  
“I have had a long time to get used to the idea,” she said sincerely, “but, no. I don’t.”  
“You do realise,” said Draco after a long silence, “that it won’t change.”  
Narcissa looked down and refused to meet his eyes.  
“I won’t wake up one morning suddenly being normal.” Draco heard his own voice tremble over the word normal, but ignored it.  
Narcissa fidgeted in her seat, her worried expression deepening.  
“Mother, I am gay,” he said, or maybe whispered. He knew she heard.  
Narcissa finally looked up in shock, like she couldn’t believe he actually had had the guts to say such a disgusting thing out loud. Her nostril flared and an embarrassed flush rose on her cheeks.  
“Don’t say that,” she pleaded.  
Draco wanted to be angrier at her. He wanted to be furious.  
Pity was not the reaction he would have imagined himself to have.   
Draco stood slowly and walked around the table to kneel in front of her.  
“Mother,” he said firmly, “mother,” he repeated when she kept avoiding his face.  
“I am gay,” he repeated.  
She gasped, covering her mouth with a thin hand and finally letting the tears that had collected at the corners of her eyes roll down her cheeks.  
“Mother,” he said one last time, hearing the shiver of emotion rolling out of his mouth with his word.  
“I am gay.” this time he could do nothing to hide the wetness of his own tears from his voice.  
She gasped again, louder and suddenly moved.  
Draco shut his eyes ready for the sting of a slap. instead, she touched his face, slowly and tenderly, like she had done millions of times before.   
She fixed her gaze on his blotched face and on her own hand.  
Draco knew what she was thinking, that maybe it was her fault, that she had been the cause.   
Then she closed her eyes letting herself sob before hugging him with that strength that had always caught Draco by surprise.  
“I won’t let him hurt you,” She whispered against the crown of his head.  
The again was implied.  
Draco stayed there, kneeling until his legs hurt, sobbing and drowning in the flowery smell of his mother’s favourite soap.   
In the long time he had spent there, letting his sobs subside until they were broken hiccups, he marvelled how freeing it had been, how new and scary.  
Not for the first time in his life, he wondered what would have been of his life if he only had had the guts to risk more, to be braver.  
It was only natural that his thoughts slowly flowed towards J. and how terrifying it was to feel so much for a person, to give someone the power to tip the scale on his own happiness.   
Draco couldn’t really explain how the grimace on his face, slowly and steadily morphed into a smile.  
They both took a deep breath, taking in each other’s pain.   
Finally, they parted and Draco slouched on the carpet at his mother’s feet like he had done morning after morning during the bright summer days of his childhood.   
He looked up at his mother pale face and her red-rimmed eyes.   
She looked just like the moon.


End file.
